“New” Wrestlers

As long as I’ve been watching wrestling I’ve seen many wrestlers who had been repackaged to be someone else. It’s always sad. I’m not going to go into past results, but more often than not they turn out bad. Not bad in an obvious way, but bad in a way where the wrestler never gets a good push past the first month or so and then they’re gone.

Okay, one instance. Fatu, who used to have one gimmick as a rough guy in a tag team called 3-Minute Warning. He was a gangster who was brought out to destroy his opponents and the opponents of the guy who brought him in, Eric Bischoff. Then he went missing for a while and was brought back as Umaga, an island warrior who couldn’t speak English but was hell-bent on kicking ass.

Personally, I’ve always enjoyed watching him wrestle, no matter the gimmick, because he’s a talented guy and he moves very well for a man his size. However, the gimmicks just weren’t working.

Umaga seemed to work, though, and I was quickly a fan. He dominated every match, and he didn’t just have squash matches, he was able to put on some decent performances, because he is a ring veteran who knows what he’s doing. Eventually he was pushed to a title reign.

Shortly after that, he was turned into a fan favorite, that didn’t go as well as his heel days and he was then dropped again.

That’s just one of the hundreds of times old wrestlers are repackaged and brought back as someone else.

Now, there’s a “new” wrestler who’s been wrestling for just less than a month now and his name is Lord Tensai, from Japan. He comes out with his fu manchu mustache and his “authentic” Japanese garb and his “real” tattoos on his face that are all in Japanese symbols which are supposed to represent how he’s a path of destruction and how people should watch out for him.

His previous tenure in the WWE, he was called A-Train. A man named Matt Bloom who was born and raised in Peabody, Massachusetts and who currently resides in Arizona. He’s not Japanese.

Bloom as A-Train

That’s okay, though, because in this day and age with information readily available, the WWE makes mention of the fact on their website that he used to be A-Train, but that he left and went to Japan to wrestle, which he actually did, and that he loved the culture so much he has taken it on himself.

Okay, fine. But the fact of the matter is, he’s still an old wrestler who has been repackaged. He still has the same moves in the ring, including his finisher which is the same one he had as A-Train, and to be honest, none of it is that impressive.

Bloom as Lord Tensai

I was never a big fan of his to begin with. He’s a big guy, but he’s, in a way, pseudo-big. While he is indeed a big guy, his arms are actually really small on him in comparison. He has tattoos and piercings and a mean look on his face to help give the big-guy impression, but he doesn’t really have a good big-guy look when you really look at him.

I say this because in his time off one would think that maybe he would work on that, but now that he’s back as Lord Tensai, it’s obvious he hasn’t worked on that at all, and he actually looks to be in worse shape now than he was when he was A-Train.

He’s now had his first three matches, all of which he’s won, including his most recent bout with John Cena. I give him another month or so before he’ll be forgotten and nobody will even care to think of him again. Let’s see where this thing goes, if anywhere other than where I say it will.